


Tabula Rasa

by Almighty_Hat



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Gen, Introspection, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:07:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1427911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Almighty_Hat/pseuds/Almighty_Hat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I think the best way to avoid spoilers in the summary is to say that I will never understand why people leave Marvel Studios movies before the credits have finished rolling.</p><p>Damaged viewpoint character, no dialogue, possibly certain liberties taken with a museum layout, no easy amnesia, kind of a lot of the passive voice, and spoilers spoilers spoilers, spoilers.  (Author's notes have warnings that are hard to effectively tag for).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tabula Rasa

**Author's Note:**

> I do not subscribe to the theory that all the Winter Soldier needs is to hear a few words from Captain America, see a picture of his face over Bucky's name, and it will all come flooding back to him. This not a story where Bucky comes back.
> 
> Nothing graphic or horrifying happens in the next eleven hundred-odd words. There's no blood, no gore, no murder (there _is_ brief mention of dislocating and relocating joints). But the Winter Soldier's mind is a bleak place, easily focused because anything that would clutter it up is regularly bleached away. I don't know, I feel like this is a hopeful sort of bleakness.
> 
> Also the language is a little bit deliberately repetitive, I abuse the hell out of my right to parentheticals, and I'm pretty sure this thing is full of the passive voice. Don't say I didn't warn you.
> 
> Many thanks to [Celaeno](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Celaeno/works) for reading this as I wrote it and putting up with my nonsense (and for going to see CA2 when I burbled "OH MY GOD GO SEE IT I WANT TO GIVE ALL OF THEM HUGS AND PIE" at her).

_He knew me._

The man on the helicarrier had known him. Damaged his left arm, dislocated his right elbow; their objectives were at odds and the man had not stopped fighting until his own objective had been achieved.

But the man on the helicarrier had known him.

The man on the helicarrier had names for him (James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. Buck). The man on the helicarrier, his objective achieved, had freed him. The man on the helicarrier, with his objective achieved, _stopped fighting him._

The man on the helicarrier had known him.

And when the man on the helicarrier fell, the Winter Soldier dove after him.

He dragged the man to shore and to safety, and left him to keep breathing. He relocated his elbow, he stole clothes to cover his left arm, and he waited.

His elbow healed and no handlers came.

The world changed around him and no handlers came.

The man on the helicarrier had known him, and after three days of pretending to be a transient, he knew no handlers were coming. He was an asset; his leash was never long. (He thought it might have been longer, once. There were no memories-- he was not allowed to have memories that did not relate to his missions, anymore if he ever had-- but there were impressions. Testing. Honing. Creation and use of the weapon he was, refining the skills that made him useful, versatile, things that could not be wiped without diminishing his worth. His missions needed him to be clean-- not empty. He knew rather than remembered that if everyone around him spoke Russian, his leash would be longer. He knew that he was in America. He knew no one spoke Russian unless he spoke it first. He knew his handlers were Hydra and SHIELD. His leash was not long.) He knew his handlers were gone, or at least scattered.

He was an asset. He could be used to rebuild. He could be sold, and the capital used to rebuild.

He was no one, he was a weapon, he could not be compromised. His handlers’ devotion to order made no emotional impact on him, and he knew this was by design. He did not have ideals or politics of his own. (He might have, once. He’d been Russian, once.) He was a ghost, no connections, no ties-- no past, no history. He had been created in Russia; he had been sold to Hydra. He was an asset, nothing more.

He had nothing.

The man on the helicarrier had names for him. James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. Buck.

He had those.

(He had names for himself; the Winter Soldier always and especially to superiors, Yakov only while he had been a Russian among Russians, Yasha rarely, too rarely to be sure when, but he knew it as a name for himself. He was not a _nameless_ ghost.)

The man on the helicarrier had names of his own. Captain America. Steven Rogers. Steve.

He treated them like leads.

The museum was easy to infiltrate; everyone looked at the exhibits, not at him. He hid his face, but backwards; his eyes and mouth uncovered, his hair tucked under a hood. No one approached him.

The walls were informative. He looked at the uniforms for a long time before deciding they were unimportant; they were familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, but they were customized military uniforms. He could not know if the familiarity was significant or if it were only that ‘customized military’ made up everything he knew he was used to.

There were painted acrylic displays bearing the names and faces of soldiers who had fought with Captain America in the war that should have killed him, the names and faces of significant figures from the mythology that had sprung up around him. They rose from the floor like tombstones printed with obituaries instead of epitaphs, even the pictures like over-magnified newsprint. He noted the names.

Dugan.

Morita.

Falsworth.

Jones.

Dernier.

Stark.

Phillips.

Erskine.

Carter.

_Barnes._

Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes was Captain Steven Grant Rogers’ best friend since childhood.

Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes had fought bravely during World War Two as a member of the Howling Commandos.

Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes was a sniper.

Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes had been a prisoner of war.

Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes had fallen from a fast-moving train in the Austrian Alps and been declared dead in 1944, though no body was ever found.

Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes _had his face._

The man on the helicarrier (Steven Grant Rogers. Captain America. Steve) had known him.

And even standing in front of the sinuous, modern, probably disposable monument, curved and clear like the thick glass window of the cryo-chamber, he acknowledged that it might not be truth, or at least a useful truth. There were a hundred things it could mean. The truth (he was, he wasn’t, he had been once, he was a copy, he had been surgically altered) was not important.

He did not remember being James Buchanan Barnes. He did not know who Bucky was.

But he had Bucky’s face, or Bucky had his.

The man on the helicarrier had known him. The man on the helicarrier had names for him. The man on the helicarrier (his objective achieved) had freed (saved) him. The man on the helicarrier (his objective achieved) stopped fighting him. The man on the helicarrier, once his own objective was achieved, had been willing to let himself be killed, beaten to death, rather than keep on fighting him.

To the man on the helicarrier, to Steven Rogers, he was not a ghost, an asset, a weapon. He was _someone._

If he had ever been someone before, it had since been wiped.

He left the museum, head down, mind working. 

Steven Rogers knew him. He was known. His handlers were dead, scattered, captured. He was compromised. He didn’t know if there was anyone left who could wipe him clean again, restore his focus-- or even just return him to cold storage.

Wanting anything was alien to him. He had not been created to directly defend things. The urge he had to protect the information he now carried-- the memories, tactically useless, but Steven Rogers knew him and photographs of James “Bucky” Barnes supported his knowledge-- was as unfamiliar as anything possibly could have been. He had not been programmed to want. He had not been designed with protective impulses in mind.

But he had the information now. Steve Rogers had been willing to die to make sure he had that information.

The knowledge was _his._

There was no one to stop him, help him, or control him. There was no one to report to, no one to submit to if they gave the right orders. There was no equipment waiting for him and a capable technician, no cold sleep to wait for the next mission. 

He was compromised.

His time was his own.

Steve Rogers knew him.

The Winter Soldier was in the wind.

**Author's Note:**

> What hit me hardest while I was watching CA2 was that the Winter Soldier, when it comes time to be wiped, submitted. Instantly, easily, despite smacking some people around _before_ that, despite the warnings that he was unstable right then. When they held out the mouth guard, he opened his mouth for it; when they strapped him down, he didn't resist. He was not, in that moment, a man fighting to retain or regain his memories; he was a malfunctioning weapon being stripped and cleaned, not only to his handlers but to himself, in his own mind.
> 
> "He knew me" is significant because it means something very different than "I knew him." 
> 
> So... this is what that is. I sat down the day after I saw the movie and this came out of me. I don't know if I'm proud of it or just emotionally compromised by Sebastian Stan's face, which manages to be heartbreakingly expressive even when portraying someone who has, like, three days of memories _tops,_ but I thank you for reading.


End file.
